Working the land(Periods 1 Warming up and Reading)
why does organic cost more?the cost of organic food is higher than that of conventional food because the organic price tag more closely reflects the true cost of growing the food:substituting labor and intensive management for chemicals,the health and environmental costs of which are borne by society.these costs include cleanup of polluted water and remediation of pesticide contamination.prices for organic foods include costs of growing,harvesting,transportation and storage.in the case of processed foods,processing and packaging costs are also included.organically produced foods must meet stricter regulations governing all these steps than conventional foods.the intensive management and labor used in organic production are frequently (though not always) more expensive than the chemicals routinely used on conventional farms.there is mounting evidence that if all the indirect costs of conventional food production were factored into the price of food,organic foods would cost the same,or,more likely,be cheaper than conventional food.3.international coalition proposes world hunger reformsrome,italy,may 28 \—an international coalition promoting plant-based solutions to world hunger proposed sweeping reforms to delegates to the food and agriculture organization meeting on world food security in rome.the purpose of the meeting was to repair a flawed process that was supposed to reduce the number of chronically hungry people in the world by half by the year .the coalition’s position paper makes several creative points to clear the impasse:a key root cause of world hunger,aside from natural disasters,pests,and wars,has been the insistence first by colonial powers and now by corporate interests on production of cash crops for export,in place of sufficient nutritious,safe,and accessible food for the local population.international trade can not solve world hunger because it shifts limited agricultural resources to production of cash crops for export,and people who don’t have access to food and other basic necessities of life have nothing to trade.western meat industries,facing public awareness of the health impacts and strict environmental regulations at home,seek to exploit the natural resources,cheap labor,and potential markets of low-income food-deficient nations (lifdns).the definition of food security as the sustainable availability of sufficient amounts of nutritious,safe,and accessible foodstuffs leads inevitably to the choice of plant-based solutions and the avoidance of animal-based solutions.